Matthew Tobin Anderson
Certain elements of teen life that, 10 years ago, were very important to me still, are becoming less so as I get older. I mean, I've kinda gotten over, I guess I'm saying, the fact that I had trouble getting a date for the prom.Collection: Teen
I can't tell you how irritating it is to be an atheist in a haunted house.
Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.'
Teens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger.
Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?
I write for teens partially to work out whatever it was that I needed to from my own teenage years.
It's insulting to believe that teens should have a different kind of book than an adult should.
If we're going to ask our kids at age 18 to go off to war and die for their country, I don't see any problem with asking them at age 16 to think about what that might mean.
A lot of the drive to make narratives came from having to play by myself as a 5- or 6-year-old in the woods.
One of the series I like is D.M. Cornish's 'Monster Blood Tattoo,' in which he creates a whole language. Kids who are reading that are building a language in their heads. There's no real cognitive difference. I think kids are excited by language, and they're not always given credit for that.
I've always enjoyed that kind of thing - thinking about the production of narrative and why it is that when we read a novel, we don't notice the fact that someone who might be very close-mouthed or tight-lipped is perfectly willing to tell us a story in 600 or 700 pages.
Occasionally people ask me how it is I write different types of things, and my answer to that is it's very natural. You get bored writing one kind of thing all the time.
I feel like it's important every once in a while to estrange ourselves from the familiar to remind ourselves of the potentialities of people, how many different ways there are of being.
I feel like it's hard to get into historical novels where you know what the story is far too well.
I completely love music. I used to be the music critic at 'The Improper Bostonian.' It's just something I've always loved very deeply.
The bedroom in my apartment is far too small to hold a nightstand. There is, however, this bookshelf. Yes, I stow whatever I'm reading on the lower shelf, but more importantly, it's where I keep a collection of ghost books.
All of my books, which are supposedly, I mean they're called YA novels, my hope is that adults would find no reason not to read them if they read them.
I eat broccoli. I think about the plot. I pace in circles for hours, counter-clockwise, listening to music. I try to think of one detail in the scene I'm about to write that I'm really excited about writing. Until I can come up with that one detail, I pace.
Sometimes reading other writers helps. You learn some little technique that turns out to be useful, or simply are reinspired by the amazing things others do.
I think kids are excited by language, and they're not always given credit for that.
It's a very 18th-century thing to have a book broken into several volumes.
I don't want to go out hunting for dismal topics to write about.
We love fantasy novels in which the characters think that they're peasants but turn out to be princes and kings.
I was someone who really loved fantasy novels and science fiction novels.
Older teens tend to write to me and say, 'Thank you for not writing down to teenagers.' And then there are the letters from adults who say, 'This is such a good book; why did you write it for teens?'
Teens are not like the weird, dumb dwarves you have around your house. They are actually you when you were younger. Why not write a book which is as sophisticated as a book for an adult, but is about the concerns that teenagers actually have?
It’s the end. It’s the end of the civilization. We’re going down. No, it’s sure not too attractive. Lenticels. I just hope my kids don’t live to see the last days. The things burning and people living in cellars. Violet. The only thing worse than the thought it may all come tumbling down is the thought that we may go on like this forever.Collection: Kids
I wanted to say something to cheer her up. I had a feeling that cheering her up might be a lot of work. I was thinking of how sometimes, trying to say the right thing to people, it’s like some kind of brain surgery, and you have to tweak exactly the right part of the lobe. Except with talking, it’s more like brain surgery with old, rusted skewers and things, maybe like those things you use to eat lobster, but brown. And you have to get exactly the right place, and you’re touching around in the brain but the patient, she keeps jumping and saying, “Ow.Collection: Cheer
Empedolces claims that in utero, our backbone is one long solid; and that through the constriction of the womb and the punishments of birth it must be snapped again and again to form our vertebrae; that for the child to have a spine, his back must first be brokenCollection: Children
There are times when friendship feels like running down a hill together as fast as you can, jumping over things, spinning around, and you don't care where you're going, and you don't care where you've come from, because all that matters is speed, and the hands holding your hands.Collection: Running
And I realize that the decision to be human is not one single instant, but is a thousand choices made very day. It is choices we make every second and requires constant vigilance. We have to fight to remain human.Collection: Fighting
…It’s like a spiral: They keep making everything more basic so it will appeal to everyone. And gradually, everyone gets used to everything being basic, so we get less and less varied as people, more simple. So the corps make everything even simpler. And it goes on and on.Collection: Simple
I do not know what I regret. I sit with my pen, and cannot find an end to that sentence.Collection: Regret
At long last, you may no longer distinguish what binds you from what is you.Collection: Long
We Americans are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they are produced, or what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away.Collection: Activism
You made her apologize for sickness. For her courage. You made her feel sorry for dying.Collection: Sorry
The natural world is so adaptable...So adaptable you wonder what's natural.Collection: World
My idea of life, it's what happens when they're rolling the credits.Collection: Ideas
The sky was as blue as a stupid postcard, and the islands were as green as islands.Collection: Stupid
it's like a squid in love with the sky.Collection: Sky
I don't know when they first had feeds. Like maybe, fifty or a hundred years ago. Before that, they had to use their hands and their eyes. Computers were all outside the body. They carried them around outside of them, in their hands, like if you carried your lungs in a briefcase and opened it to breathe.Collection: Eye
Of course, I had my heart broken as a teen. I was desperately in love with myself. Then I found out that I was completely shallow. I haven't spoken to myself since.Collection: Heart
We all flee in hope of finding some ground of securityCollection: Findings
I could see my face, crying, in her blank eye.Collection: Eye
Perhaps his gloom was due to his profession, that he lived among fallen empires, and in reading these languages that had not been spoken by the common man in centuries, he had all about him the ruin of language, evidence of toppled suburbs, grass growing among the mosaics, and voices that had been choked with poison, iron, age, or ash.Collection: Reading
There is a power in names. Olakunde told us of ashe-the power which runs through all things, subtle and flexible, which find its most potent expression in human utterance; so that it is a terrible thing to call down imprecations on an enemy, or to wish for anything but good, for what is said out loud is forged into truth.Collection: Running
People talk about the beauty of the spring, but I can't see it. The trees are brown and bare, slimy with rain. Some are crawling with new purple hairs. And the buds are bulging like tumorous acne, and I can tell that something wet, and soft, and cold, and misshapen is about to be born. And I am turning into a vampire.Collection: Spring
Certain elements of teen life that, 10 years ago, were very important to me still, are becoming less so as I get older. I mean, Ive kinda gotten over, I guess Im saying, the fact that I had trouble getting a date for the prom.Collection: Mean
Its a very 18th-century thing to have a book broken into several volumes.Collection: Book
A library is an adjustable wrench for opening the head.Collection: Library